The death of Vice President Muhammad Qasim Fahim, who played a crucial role in ousting the Taliban, created a rift in the political power structure less than a month before Afghans were to elect a new leader.

December 21, 2012, Friday

The photographer Robert Nickelsberg has been making trips to Afghanistan since 1988. His new book-length project, "A Distant War," goes past the current, seemingly intractable American invasion to show how a nation has been beleaguered by decades of...